Alpha-cardiac Actin Serum Expression Levels Detect Acute Cellular Rejection in Heart Transplant Patients

Figures

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  FIGURE 1.. Circulating expression levels of mRNA encoding alpha-cardiac actin (ACTC1) and different altered myosins. Comparison between nonrejection and the different grades of acute rejection of heart allografts (acute cellular rejection [ACR] grade 1R and grade ≥2R). Bar graph of mRNA expression levels ± SEM of ACTC1 (A), light chain myosins (B), and heavy chain myosins (C). Values were obtained by Illumina HiSeq 2500 sequencing. a.u., arbitrary units.

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  FIGURE 2.. Circulating expression levels of mRNA encoding altered actinins, troponins, tropomyosins, and other sarcomeric genes. Comparison between nonrejection and the different grades of acute rejection of heart allografts (acute cellular rejection [ACR] grade 1R and grade ≥2R). Bar graph of mRNA expression levels ± SEM of actinins (A), troponins and tropomyosins (B), and other sarcomeric genes (C). Values were obtained by Illumina HiSeq 2500 sequencing. a.u., arbitrary units.

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  FIGURE 3.. Relative expression levels of altered circulating genes encoding sarcomeric proteins in acute rejection grade ≥2R. The bars indicate the fold change (FC) ± SEM (A). The controls values were set to 1. The FC units represent the FC over the control RNA relative expression levels (nonrejection group). **P < 0.01 and ***P < 0.0001 vs the nonrejection group. Hierarchical clustering heat map based on the relative expression levels of genes between the normal and rejected heart allografts (B). The hierarchical clustering heat map analyses show the separation of the ≥2R rejection and nonrejection groups based on the expression of circulating sarcomeric genes. The genes are listed in columns and samples in the rows. The colors depict the relative expression level of each molecule, with blue being the lowest and yellow the highest.

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  FIGURE 4.. Circulating alpha-cardiac actin (ACTC1) protein levels. Comparison between nonrejection and acute rejection (acute cellular rejection [ACR] grade ≥2R). Bar graph of the ACTC1 protein levels ± SEM (SEM) (A). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of circulating ACTC1 for the detection of cardiac allograft rejection (ACR grade ≥2R) (B).